Easton City Council approves budget, tables tax repeal

DENISE SANCHEZ, THE MORNING CALL

The free bridge in Easton.

The free bridge in Easton. (DENISE SANCHEZ, THE MORNING CALL)

Of The Morning Call

Easton city won't have a tax hike in 2015 for residents.

Easton City Council approved a $33 million budget for 2015 Wednesday night. But with a legal challenge to the non-resident earned-income tax pending, council was hesitant to follow through and repeal the per capita tax.

For residents of Easton, the budget contained few surprises. Real estate taxes, residential EIT, and sewer and trash rates all remained the same.

The budget might also have done away with the yearly $15 per capita tax Easton residents pay, but after council member Elinor Warner said she planned to vote against the idea, council put on the brakes.

Warner said she opposed repealing the per capita tax because council earlier agreed to hike its non-resident tax, after officials said they had to raise it because of steep pension costs.

If Easton has to raise taxes on commuters, "it's irresponsible to get rid of a revenue line no matter how much of a pain it is to collect," Warner said.

So council agreed to postpone a vote on the per capita tax until January, pending the outcome of the legal challenge to its non-resident EIT. The per capita tax brings in about $92,000 a year.

The city also intends to start charging businesses a fee for hosting events in Easton.

To balance the budget, the city had to make some trims, eliminating programs such as Weed and Seed, a former state and federal social concern the city had inherited from the state.

The city eliminated four positions and offered buyouts to employees close to retirement. Through personnel moves, the city saved $290,000.

But none of the city's moves changed the tax or fee burden on city residents.

The same, however, could not be said about non-residents.

Late last month, council approved an increase of two-tenths of a percentage point in the income tax the city charges some people who live outside the city but who work there. The move will bring an additional $400,000 that the city will, by law, use toward its pension obligations.

When Mayor Sal Panto Jr. first floated the idea of increasing the tax in the 2015 budget, Northampton County officials blanched, condemning not only the increase but the tax itself.

Several county officials, who pay employees who work in Easton, declared it "taxation without representation" and pointed to a similar tax plan in Scranton that a judge declared illegal in late September.

Last week, Northampton County's solicitor filed suit against Easton, hoping a judge will agree that state law doesn't allow them to levy the tax.

But city officials feel confident the commuter tax and its increase will survive the challenge.